Is "Dabbing" the Crack of Pot?

[Pryderi]

http://www.thefix.com/content/dabbing-crack-pot-legalization91774

Butane hash oil, a potent marijuana concentrate, is gaining popularity. So why does it split the pro-pot community?

Will BHO incite more anti-pot paranoia?

By Victoria Kim
06/12/13

Butane hash oil (BHO)—also known as dabs, honey oil, wax, oil, shatter, or budder—is a potent marijuana concentrate that can exceed 80% THC content. Growing in popularity in recent years, BHO is hailed by some as “the future of cannabis” while others fear it could harm the image of the legalization movement. "It is very, very potent," Nick, 21, a Physics and Applied Math double-major and avid pot smoker from New York, tells The Fix. "It's like the first time you smoked. Every single time."

BHO is produced by one of two methods: “open” or “closed." The open method involves packing a stainless steel tube with marijuana and "blasting" the tube with butane (an extraction solvent). The resulting extract—a thick, yellow-orange oil—trickles out onto a pan. This method can be dangerous: FEMA reports increasing incidents of explosions across the US caused by clumsy hash oil production attempts. The closed system, a safer method, uses a machine called a butane oil extractor—which is also used to perform oil extraction from botanical herbs like lavender and mint to produce aromatics, infusions, and tinctures. Consuming BHO is known as "dabbing," and usually involves the user touching the concentrate onto a heated surface (like a nail) and inhaling its vapors. Some dabbing paraphernalia resembles traditional meth or crack pipes, which Nick says could "freak out a lot of parents once dabbing gets huge."

[nebenaube]

1. No

And to insinuate that it is, is simply ridiculous.

[catnhatnh]

2. I don't know...

...the first time you got high did you ACT like you were on crack? If not then probably not. My bet is this is driven by the drug war bullshit-you take a large amount of grass to a private place and reduce it to a smaller, more potent, more easily concealed and transported, and more difficult to identify state. All this is to avoid the bullshit enforcement, not to build supergrass.

[delrem]

3. "It's like the first time you smoked. Every single time."

Nick, 21, a Physics and Applied Math double-major and avid pot smoker from New York, should keep to the books. At that young age, with an agile mind and in an academic environment, there's nothing to exceed it. But if he got $$ for the interview, good for him!

If it's the same stuff, and it is, then concentrating it just means that less mass of it is required to get a person high. Since a person ingests it to get high anyway, the different quantities the stuff are sold at relative prices. For sure, a potential purchaser will factor in how each product fits with whatever desired ambiance. Fairly simple, except for that it's all illegal.

[WovenGems]

4. Oil

It is most often used to upgrade some cheap Mexican field grown ragweed. Some ragweed can be cured to where it tastes good but is low in THC. This makes for tasty bowl of weed that is not outrageously priced.

[CanSocDem]

5. It's a boon to the licensed grower.

Licenses are awarded, based on the finished product. Obviously, the grower would want the highest quality in the "finished product". Creating an ounce of "honey oil" would be preferrable over an ounce of 'bud' when you are legally permitted to grow an ounce of medicine.

I have seen some legal grow rooms but only heard of the operations that make "honey oil". I don't know if I could stand watching them reduce the finest buds into saturated, spent and lifeless weeds just to make a few grams of oil that, to be honest, has, over the years, never impressed me that much.

But, like they say: "Just say NO to drugs....unless they're really good."


.

[WovenGems]

6. Nah

You have six plants of Bubblegum or Blueberry. You harvest and trim the buds. Take the trimmings and the rest of the leaves on the plant and process that for oil. That way you get fine buds and oil and have used the whole plant. Well, not the stalk or stems.